Fun With Right-Wing Talk RadioI called into talk to Newsmax contributor Daniel Flynn who was on Al Rantel’s LA radio show to promote his new book, Why The Left Hates America (read more about it on Pandagon). Newsmax is a right-wing web site run by Christopher Ruddy. Ruddy is one-third of what I refer to as The Scaife Monkeyboy Triumvirate (the other two members are WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah and FrontPageMag’s David Horowitz). During the 1990’s, billionaire wingnut Richard Mellon Scaife was bankrolling Ruddy and Farah to suggest that Vince Foster didn’t commit suicide. Ruddy made the mistake of daring 60 Minutes to cover the story. Mike Wallace took Ruddy up on the offer and swiftly and decisively put his foot up Ruddy’s venal cornhole. Wallace showed how Ruddy’s conspiracy theory was full of basic errors such as being wrong about Foster’s handedness. Ann Coulter in Slander called Ruddy’s book on the subject, “a conservative hoax book” (As Terry Krepel points out, this led to an awkward situation in which Newsmax was promoting a book that slammed the site’s founder). One final clarification: I didn’t mean to imply that all mainstream Republicans hate America—I was trying to clarify this when Rantel interrupted me.

SCOOBIE: Let me just go to my point: there is a lot of America-hating on the left, but there is a lot of the mainstream right hating of the left—and I’m not talking about some far-out militia types. What I’m talking about--the mainstream of the Republican Party—

SCOOBIE: Let me just give you a quick example: recently over 40 members of the GOP Congress paid tribute to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his lame excuse for a newspaper, the Washington Times. This is just an individual who just despises America and American democracy. He called America “The kingdom of Satan.” I don’t see why there shouldn’t be more repudiation of this.

[RANTEL DISCONNECTS SCOOBIE]

RANTEL: Alright, Daniel, there’s the example. What have you got to say about that?

FLYNN: This is my point. There are certainly folks on the right who hate America, but they’re usually in log cabins on top of some mountain in Idaho. The folks on the left who hate America are mainstream Hollywood actors, they’re people like Mumia Abu-Jamal...[Flynn gives more examples but ignores my example of Moon entirely].